Ellen and LinkedIn, 2 Brilliant Efforts

If you are looking for inspiration, or examples of fantastic campaigns, take a look at what Ellen and LinkedIn have been up to.

Ellen

My 10-year-old daughter recently came running down from her room, with her iPad mini in hand asking me if I had heard of this new website – Ellen (as in Ellen DeGeneres). Puzzled, I wanted to know what in the world Ellen could be saying that is relevant to the 10-year-old children market. She promptly showed me “.”

Who knew Ellen was so hip?

Two days later, my retired father-in-law asked if he could call us back because he was watching TV and the president was going to be on his favorite TV show, “Ellen.”

A retired man now too?

Was Ellen taking over the world?

That night I was on the phone with my friend trying to make sense of this weird obsession with Ellen when she told me she is a huge Ellen fan via YouTube.

And that is when I stopped thinking as a customer and started thinking as a marketer. Somehow Ellen has managed to create a series of engagement entry points, all driven by age/channel-appropriate content. And, each one of them drives you into a conversion/engagement funnel that sucks you in to discover and explore more content. It is brilliant! Kudos to the team who designed this.

Earlier this week, I received an email from LinkedIn letting me know my profile was among the top 1 percent of profiles viewed in 2012. The email drove many emotions: surprise, happiness, excitement, skepticism, curiosity – so I clicked through.

The email marketer in me was quite impressed with the landing page letter and ability to share my accolades on Twitter, Facebook, and, of course, LinkedIn. I couldn’t resist by share the message; it was personal, without being self-promoting.

I learned that 20 million people received emails from LinkedIn (the size of the top 10 percent of their database). The execution of the campaign was fantastic! It drove engagement, discovery, buzz, and brand loyalty.

A huge congratulations to the team who created this effort.

Brands are building growth and success by leveraging their own content to create campaigns that resonate with their recipients. Maybe they can spark some ideas for your future efforts.

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GroupM predicts that global ad spend will top $547 billion next year, up from $524 billion this year. While television will still capture the biggest share of that 12-figure pie (41%), digital's share will grow from 31% to 33%.